Medical imaging systems are used in a wide range of applications to process and display images of an object. Herein, an ultrasonic diagnostic system will be described as an example of a medical imaging system.
Ultrasonic diagnostic systems are used in a wide range of medical applications due to non-invasive and non-destructive characteristics thereof.
An ultrasonic diagnostic system must obtain an optimized ultrasound image of a target so that accurate diagnosis can be performed based on the ultrasound image. Accordingly, users need to adjust a variety of image parameters, such as gain, time gain compensation (TGS), dynamic range (DR) and reject, which correspond to brightness, contrast, etc. of the ultrasound image displayed on a monitor of the system. However, since it is very inconvenient to adjust such parameters whenever the ultrasonic diagnostic system is used, investigations have been made in the art to achieve automatic adjustment of such parameters.
For example, a conventional ultrasonic diagnostic system is configured to store predetermined reference parameters and to process an input image according to a predetermined image processing algorithm based on the reference parameters to generate an optimized image. One example of this system is disclosed in Korean Patent No. 748858.
However, since such a conventional ultrasonic diagnostic system uses reference parameters preset by system manufacturers, users cannot change the reference parameters. That is, although the conventional ultrasonic diagnostic system can automatically process images based on the preset reference parameters, the reference parameters cannot be changed by users as needed. Thus, in order to obtain images processed based on desired parameters other than the preset reference parameters, the users must manually reset the parameters whenever using the system.
That is, such a conventional medical imaging system including the conventional ultrasonic diagnostic system has predetermined algorithms for image processing to automatically process input images based on preset reference parameters, but has no mechanism to provide optimized parameters changed from existing reference parameters based on user preference.